Sir Edward Leigh
MP for Gainsborough · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Those of us who love the Jewish people and faith know that the reason why they have overcome all the empires that have tried to destroy them is that they are primarily people of the book and not the sword, but what is happening in the west bank is violent and egregious.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for looking again at Lincolnshire. I made the point to her predecessor that the proposal for a Greater Lincolnshire authority was, in the eyes of many people, just a gerrymander. Will she look again at it and stop dividing West Lindsey and North Kesteven in half?”
“If the centre does not take action, nasty extremes will take over. The fact is that we are in acute danger. These people can now launch from anywhere on the north French coast and are escorted to our shores. Frankly, we are being invaded, and the public are completely fed up.”
“May I congratulate the Prime Minister on what he said about Ukraine and on how he conducted himself there? Our enemies should know that this House is completely and utterly united in standing behind the Ukrainian people.”
“What concerns me is the jobs of my constituents who work at Scunthorpe. That is all I am worried about; I have no ideological objection. If it is what is needed now, fair enough. As long as the blast furnaces are totally uneconomic because of high energy costs, however, it can only be a sticking plaster.”
“One of the poorest wards in the entire country is Gainsborough south-west ward. Why is the Secretary of State splitting West Lindsey in half? Why is he taking Scampton away from Gainsborough? It makes no sense. Why is he cutting away the nuclear fusion site from Lincoln?”
The complete record
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“Order. Quite a lot of people have risen to speak, and I would like to give them all the chance to do so. I do not want to introduce a limit at this point, so I ask that you keep your speeches under six minutes.”
“I do not want to impose a time limit, but I want to let everybody speak, so please keep your remarks down to five minutes—have a look at the clock. I call Peter Aldous.”
“We have time for five minutes for the SNP spokesman, five minutes for the Opposition spokesman and 10 minutes for the Minister. I call Stephen Flynn.”
“The Alliance of Pro-Life Students says that more than 70% of pro-life students face situations in seminars or lectures where they feel unable to speak openly, and one in three students surveyed had seen events cancelled due to the no-platforming of pro-life students and speakers. Will the Minister make it absolutely clear that whatever people’s views on pro-life issues, those who take that stance have a right to be heard in our universities?”
“There is ample evidence that the big retailers, which dominate the nation’s forecourts, have not passed on the cut in fuel duty, and we know that from the Platts price. I urge the Chancellor to take action to put pressure on these companies, but given our experience in this matter, does that not rather underline the fact that we Conservatives understand that there are enormous difficulties in interfering in the marketplace and that the best way to help people is an overall reduction in the tax burden?”
“When I was made a Privy Counsellor, I mentioned to the present Clerk of the Privy Council that I was very proud that my father had been its clerk some 35 years earlier. The present clerk is a very modern civil servant, of course, so he looked completely blank, but when I summoned up the courage to mention it to Her Majesty, she immediately fixed me with an eagle eye and said, “Yes, I know it—I remember it.” That sums up not just her devotion to duty, but her formidable intellect. How lucky we are to have a Head of State who has such an incredibly long institutional memory.”
“She ended her address by invoking divine help: “God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.” The reign of the first Queen Elizabeth was marked by religious bigotry, division and bloodshed—indeed, one of my ancestors was hung, drawn and quartered for his faith—but the reign of this Queen Elizabeth has been marked by unity, peace, freedom and toleration. Whether we are people of faith, atheists, humanists or secularists, we appreciate her long record of devoted service, which I am sure is founded on her faith, and we celebrate her whole life. May I end with a personal point? I know that we are not supposed to talk about Privy Council meetings, but the Prime Minister has emboldened me by addressing, in part, what happens in his meetings with the sovereign.”
“Her faith is moderate, compassionate and non-judgmental, as she reminds us every year on the Feast of the Incarnation, in her Christmas address, and at the end of the Queen’s Speech. As we stand at the Bar of the other House, she tells us, “I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels.” I doubt that they always do. As Princess Elizabeth and as Queen Elizabeth, she has never been afraid of talking about her faith. Who can forget her 21st birthday speech in Cape Town? She addressed “all the peoples of the British Commonwealth…wherever they live, whatever race they come from, and whatever language they speak”, vowing that “my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service”.”
“Apart from the Father of the House, most hon. Members at this debate have lived under no other monarch. I was only one year old when the Queen came to the throne, so I must confess that my recollection of the last reign is somewhat dim, but I have been very happy to live during this one. I am not sure whether it has yet been mentioned that the Queen is the only leading public figure who never asked for the job. She never campaigned for it, never plotted for it and probably never wanted it. Her whole life has been one of duty—what an incredible record. Another point that has not been emphasised is that Her Majesty is one of the very few remaining leading public figures who acknowledge their faith. Others, perhaps, fear putting themselves on some kind of moral pedestal.”
“We cannot have a situation in which there is no proper Government in Northern Ireland. The fact is that the DUP will not come back into government unless we address the protocol. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) that of course we want to respect international law, but we have to sort this out. The issues we face are urgent and important. I am sure the Government are listening, and I urge them to address these issues as dramatically as they would address the issues following a world war. The effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are so grave that we should all unite, with a sense of compassion, to help people who are suffering with this level of inflation, rising costs and rising taxation.”
“The Government have to understand that we simply cannot replace mass immigration from the EU with mass immigration from the rest of the world, which is why the channel crossings are so totemic. The Home Secretary is right to try to address the crossings, for all the controversy. Last week, from 9 to 15 May, 607 migrants aboard 25 boats were detected in the channel. In the week before, from 2 to 8 May, 792 migrants aboard 30 boats were detected. From 25 April to 1 May, 254 migrants aboard seven boats were detected. This cannot continue. We have to build houses, we have to control immigration, we have to cut taxes and we have to kick-start the economy. Although there has been great criticism of the Government’s handling of the Northern Ireland protocol, we have to unite this United Kingdom.”
“That was a 3% decrease compared with the previous quarter and a 3% decrease compared with the same quarter of the previous year. The number of dwellings completed from October to December 2021 was 41,330, a 4% decrease on the previous quarter and an 11% decrease on the same quarter of the previous year. The fact is that this is a crisis. I welcome that, through the Queen’s Speech, the Government are honestly attempting to find a way through the planning controls to get the housing we need, but we need a similar effort to the one we had after the second world war, when Harold Macmillan built 300,000 council houses a year. We have to see this as an absolute priority. There is no point building more housing—and it is a crisis we need to address—or cutting taxes if, at the same time, immigration is out of control.”
“The rise in inflation is projected to spark the biggest decline in living standards in any single financial year, so I follow the hon. Member for Aberavon in calling for radical policies. I am not against a windfall tax, but I am not sure that, on its own, it will make a great deal of difference after we have divided its receipts between every household in Britain. Frankly, the Chancellor has to come back to this House in time for the Budget, or preferably before, and introduce a cut in the overall tax burden. I also want to talk about the housing crisis. If we are going to kick-start the economy and help our young people get into housing, we simply have to build much more housing. The number of dwellings where, according to building control figures, building work had started on the site was 41,600 in October to December 2021.”
“Given that families are suffering and people are lying awake at night desperately searching for a way to pay their bills, and that we are in such a crisis, we have to move in a far more radical direction on the overall tax burden. I put that to the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday in Treasury questions, and I was quite pleased with his response when I urged him to make this a priority. We are now facing the heaviest tax burden since the 1940s. Freezing income tax thresholds, combined with more inflation, will push many people into higher tax thresholds. Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that “almost all workers will be paying more tax on their earnings in 2025 than they would have been paying without this parliament’s reforms to income tax and NICs”.”
“There has never been an easier opportunity for the Opposition to attack the Government in terms of broad economic statistics, but that ignores the fact that when the last general election took place we could not possibly have predicted the impact of a global pandemic or, unbelievably, war in Europe as a result of the cruel tyrant Putin trying to recreate an old-style empire. I would argue that no Government since the second world war have faced greater challenges. I would also contend that, generally, the Opposition have failed to provide any substantial alternative policies that would have greatly alleviated the situation in regard to the war in Ukraine or the pandemic. I am going to hold the Government to account, however. I want to hold them to account on the tax burden.”
“The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) attacks us for being the party of low growth, but this is the party that has presided over a situation where we have more people in employment than ever before. Unbelievably, the number of vacancies is higher than the number of those who are unemployed. But he is right—this is why I am going to follow the hon. Gentleman—to focus laser-like on what we are told to talk about today, although we are allowed to stray a bit during this Queen’s Speech debate, which is achieving economic growth. That is what the British people care about. In time, we can have an interesting debate about Channel 4 privatisation, about foie gras and about conversion therapy, but those are not the overwhelming priorities of the British people at the moment. What they are concerned about is the cost of living crisis.”
“T8. I am not sure whether there is much point in indulging in a blame game against the Bank of England or the Treasury, given that we are facing the unprecedented attack of a global pandemic and war in Europe. The fact remains that conservative Governments who have increased taxation during recession—such as those led by the first George Bush or John Major—go down to defeat. More importantly, millions of families are now desperately worried about how they will pay their bills. Will the Chancellor now say that his absolute priority, coming up to the Budget, is to reduce the overall tax burden on working families?”
“The Leader of the Opposition was big-hearted enough to say that he unwittingly misled the House. I am sure he would agree that it is very important to stick to the convention that we do not call each other liars, and there is a good reason for that. Two of our colleagues have been killed and there have been a lot of attacks on colleagues. In this debate, can we just accept that everybody here is an honourable Member and that when they speak here, although they may unwittingly mislead the House, they think that they were, for instance, abiding with the rules? Can we tone down the whole nature of this debate?”
“Following the previous question, does my right hon. Friend agree that the un-godly thing to do would be to do nothing and have a mass drowning of children in the channel this winter? Given that there is no end of people who want to cross the channel—however many we let in legally—is it not morally incumbent on those who oppose the policy to explain to the House how they will break the business model that once someone gets here, they are put in a hotel and never sent back?”
“Yes, someone needs to have the courage to get rid of the leader, but it is the leader who is sitting in the Kremlin and causing the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. Maybe I only speak for myself, and I say it in all humility, but I am not going to give the satisfaction to that death’s head tyrant of removing a British Prime Minister who has given an apology, and who was working night and day to save thousands of lives and went downstairs to thank his staff who were doing the same job. He has apologised: let us show some compassion.”
“Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) spoke about the case of the 16-year-old girl who delivered a foetus who, apparently, was 20 weeks old. That is why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said, the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Children welcomes the Government’s stance, and why children and young people will be provided with protections. I urge hon. Members, whatever their view, to think, to consider the evidence and not to rush in. The amendment goes completely against the whole spirit of the Abortion Act. Whatever we think of that Act, the amendment would be a huge new step that I believe would put more women’s health at risk and possibly lead to coercion—we need more evidence on that. I therefore support what the Government are doing today.”
“Barely a seventh of the Members of the House of Lords actually took part in the Division. We need a proper, evidenced debate on this issue. There is nothing more important when a human life is at risk. Of course, we all support telemedicine; I chaired a meeting yesterday on atopic eczema and we are making wonderful steps, but as important as curing atopic eczema is, it is nowhere near as important as a situation where a life is at stake. I know that there are different views about coercion, but surely the whole point of the Abortion Act, for those who supported it, was to get abortions into a safe medical location and to get them away from the backstreets. People surely did not want them to be done at home, where there is risk. The hon.”
“Obviously, abortion is a deeply emotional issue and we probably all know where we stand, but this is not a debate about abortion. At-home abortions were brought in as a purely temporary measure to defend women’s health. It was always the understanding that the measure would continue just as long as the pandemic continued. There are many different arguments about this issue. I could go through the statistics that have been given to me that some people might deny, but it is undoubtedly the case that more than 10,000 women who took at least one abortion pill at home provided by the NHS in 2020 needed hospital treatment. There is therefore an issue around safety and women’s health and we need a proper debate. This amendment was brought in in the House of Lords at night-time.”
“Will the Chancellor keep an open mind about helping those people with some sort of tax relief—if not on insurance, on the cost of operations that are delayed for up to two years?”
“With the world economy facing unparalleled challenges from at least two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse—death from plague and war—and with all the challenges that the Chancellor faces, I wonder whether anybody seriously believes, after a decade of unfunded spending promises, that tax would be any lower under a Labour Government. That is a question that I think the Labour party should answer. May I ask a question on behalf of people of pensionable age? More and more of them are having to wait a long time—up to two years—for so-called minor operations, which can be very debilitating and very painful. More and more people on middle incomes are dipping into their savings or going into debt to pay for private operations.”
“It seems that Lords amendment 7 goes to the heart of what we are talking about today. Does the Minister agree that the Bill, taken as a whole, is a package, and that if we start amending it in this way to facilitate economic migration, we will end any chance we have of stopping cross-channel migration, stopping the evil criminal gangs and taking back control of our borders? This is a package, and I am afraid we have to vote down all the amendments.”
“I repeat that what we have in the Bill is the bare minimum to try to break the cycle of it being just about economically attractive to make the appallingly dangerous journey. We have to have a variety of measures in our toolkit. I do not know whether we will ever resort to pushback, although the Greeks have pursued it very successfully, and I do not know whether we will ever resort to offshoring, although the Australians have used it very successfully.”
“We have no national identity card, which I think will become increasingly essential in the modern world. People can vanish into the community, and we already have large communities from all over the world. The pull factors are enormous—in a way, President Macron has a point. We have to ask people who oppose the Bill and seek to amend it, what is their solution? Everybody accepts that the cross-channel trade is appalling—it criminalises desperate people and lines the pockets of gangsters—but what is the solution? Such is the pull factor and the push factor that even if we did have offshore asylum claims for 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000, it would probably make very little difference to the number of people desperate to get into this country by any means at all.”
“I commend the Minister for the moderate and sensible way in which he introduced the Bill and I urge him, when considering how we should vote on all the amendments, to be robust and to hold the line. When the Bill becomes an Act it will be crawled over by so-called human rights lawyers, and I believe that it is the bare minimum to try to deal with the scandal of channel crossings, which are putting so many lives at risk. Let us pause for a moment and think about what we can agree on. The push factors are enormous, such is the misery in the world in places such as Yemen, Syria, Iraq and many other countries. There is no limit to the number of people who want to come here. Let us consider the pull factors. We have the most liberal labour laws in Europe. We speak English; we can do nothing about that.”
“It is a minimum solution. It is, actually, a humanitarian solution. It is about trying to prevent people from taking appalling risks. If we allow any of the amendments—any of the amendments—and if we do not hold the line, sooner or later there will be an even greater tragedy in the English channel.”
“I am afraid that the Government have to hold the line. My personal view is that until we are prepared to criminalise people who take the illegal route, until we are prepared to arrest them and until we are prepared to deport them, we will never have a chance of dealing with this trade. The Bill is just the first step in trying to deal with this appalling problem. I ask those who support the amendments and oppose the Government today—I repeat the question—what is their solution? People are pouring across the channel every day. Sooner or later there is going to be a terrible tragedy. We have already had one tragedy in November. What is their solution? How are they going to stop that? How are they going to break the cycle used by criminal gangs? There is no solution, apart from what the Government are attempting to do today.”
“I do not think that that is true. Actually, if we talk about our response to Ugandan refugees, Hong Kong and many other areas, we have been generous. We have to have a sense of proportion. Such is the overwhelming number of people who want to come here, we have to hold the line. If we did not, it would have a catastrophic effect on race relations. [ Interruption. ] Yes, it would, because people would be angry about it. They would think, “Why did I vote Brexit when I can’t even control my own borders? What are the Government doing?” The Government, to be responsible, have to respond by trying to deal with illegal cross-channel crossings. All the Lords amendments would just add to the pull factors. For instance, one amendment says that people should be allowed to work after six months. That is an extraordinarily attractive pull factor.”
“I represent Gainsborough South West ward, the 24th most deprived in the country. I wonder whether the Minister would like to come to Gainsborough and discuss with me how we can have pilot schemes, perhaps in the 100 most deprived wards in the country, to really tackle the problem of deprivation with a cross-Government approach that would improve universal credit and tax credits to get people into work and keep them in work, help businesses create jobs in those wards and, above all, help with housing. Is that not a good idea?”
“I commend the Minister for his clear answer today that, if an application for shale gas is made, there will be no political objection from the Government, but it must be determined on the basis of the support of the local community, by which I presume he means the local planning process. Can he confirm that that approach, based on local community support, will also apply to large solar farms?”
“Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham and we will avoid taking good agricultural land and will try to put these developments on brownfield sites. The point made earlier that this is really an opportunity to create a battery farm is very apposite. We are littering the Lincolnshire countryside with not just a solar farm but a battery farm. It is simply not acceptable.”
“I ask the Minister who will reply to this debate, given that wheat prices are going through the roof and that there will be severe constraints on food supplies and wheat production, why are we taking good agricultural land? Why is that in the national interest? Dare I say, before we are too introspective and just talk about ourselves and our interests, that countries like Lebanon and Egypt are almost wholly reliant on Ukrainian wheat. That gives us even more responsibility to plan not just for our own food supplies, but for other parts of the world. My main point is this. We want a properly enforceable planning process so that we can get real mitigation. We want to be assured by the Minister that when it comes to applications for solar farms, he will agree with his right hon.”
“There could be mitigation in terms of landscaping and the growing of woodland, hedges and so on, but we want to be absolutely assured that that will take place. Before my time is up, I want to refer to a very good answer that the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), made to me on 22 February: “The Government recognise the importance of preserving the most productive farmland. Planning guidance is clear: where possible, large solar farms should use previously developed land, and projects should be designed to avoid, mitigate, and where necessary compensate for impact.” —[ Official Report , 22 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 162.] That was an impressive answer.”
“The applicants accumulate land just to get it over a certain acreage, so that it becomes a nationally significant infrastructure project and bypasses the local planning process. Nobody is against solar farms because they are against solar farms. The point we are making is that we want a proper planning process and we want local people to be involved. We fear that this will go straight to a Government inspector, who will be working towards national guidelines to create more solar energy, and our concerns will be overridden. Surely, West Lindsey District Council, representing the good people of the part of Lincolnshire that I represent, should have a right to have its say, and its say should be enforceable. I have done quite a lot of travelling around the proposed site.”
“It is an honour to take part in this debate introduced by my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith). He was talking about the solar farm application in his constituency. That runs over the River Trent into my constituency of Gainsborough, and Gainsborough is going to be ringed by a solar farm of no less than the equivalent of 4,000 football pitches. It is a huge development. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) represents a lovely city surrounded by beautiful green countryside; I suspect her attitude might be quite different if somebody proposed a solar farm of 4,000 football pitches in the countryside around Bath. I personally believe that this is, in a way, a cheat on the planning system.”
“May I therefore be a correcting voice, and congratulate her on her humanitarian but proportionate response, and on not throwing away the immigration rulebook?”
“Everybody wants to be humanitarian, and the Home Secretary is under pressure to have a visa-free scheme like the rest of Europe, but may I congratulate her on her proportionate response? We have to remember that, unlike the rest of Europe, we have uniquely liberal labour laws and we speak English, so we are the country of choice for mass immigration. I therefore urge her to listen to not only all the humanitarian voices but the voices of people in, for instance, Lincolnshire, where we feel we have really done our bit in terms of migration from eastern Europe. We are under extreme pressure in terms of housing and jobs. [ Interruption. ] I know that this is difficult to say, but we have to be honest about it.”
“People will say that this is weak and that there should be some warlike response, and people will say that we should have allowed Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons, that we should arm the Ukrainians and that Ukraine should join NATO, but this is the path to war. It is sometimes difficult to speak of a path to peace, but if we escalate issues and go into a tit-for-tat situation, then war can result. At the height of the first world war, the German Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg was asked how the war started, and he said that he had no idea how it started and no idea how it escalated.”
“We could not have said to an independent country such as Ukraine that it could never join NATO, but the reality is that NATO has never made any effort to actually move this application forward. Indeed, the German Chancellor said only in the last week that Ukraine’s membership of NATO was “not on the agenda”, so when Putin claims that we are trying to make Ukraine a vassal state, he is lying. What do we do now? I know that what I am going to say may not be very popular with some, but I think we have to continue with the strategy we have pursued so far. The Government have been attacked for the so-called weakness of their sanctions, but the sanctions they imposed earlier this week were only part of the story. What I am sure we will hear tonight is much stricter sanctions that will really hurt the Russian state.”
“I personally think that the response of western Governments and of NATO up to now has been right and proportionate. What we have avoided doing, and must continue to avoid doing, is playing to the victimhood mindset of many Russian nationalists. They believe that they were humiliated by the west following the fall of the Soviet Union, particularly by President Clinton. They believe that Secretary of State Baker gave a solemn promise that NATO would not expand eastwards. Whether or not that is right is not important; they believe it. President Putin has claimed, completely wrongly, that we are trying to make a vassal state of Ukraine, and he has used the issue of NATO membership to justify his actions.”
“What happened was that there was a brief upsurge of Ukrainian nationalism in 1918 and 1919, following the collapse of the tsarist empire, but Lenin quickly snuffed out Ukrainian independence and in effect made Ukraine a vassal state. When Putin says that Ukraine has always been part of Russia, in a sense he is right because, following the partitions of Poland in the 1770s and the 1790s, Ukraine was an integral part of Russia for nearly 200 years. When we look inside the mind of a Russian nationalist such as Mr Putin, we can see that he does not recognise Ukraine as an independent state. I have heard a lot of criticism of the responses of our Government and of NATO generally, but I think that nothing we could have done differently would have changed that mindset or probably avoided what has happened today.”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this debate. As much as anybody in the House of Commons, having been chairman of the all-party group on Russia and being married to someone who is half-Russian, I have sought to understand Russia and the mindset of its leaders. What I am going to say in no way amounts to my approval of what is going through the mind of Vladimir Putin; I heartily condemn what has happened this morning. However, in this country and in the west, we think of the relationship of Russia and Ukraine in a rather similar vein to how we thought of the relationship between Germany and Poland before the second world war. Russian nationalists such as Mr Putin have a completely different mindset. In his speech a couple of days ago, Mr Putin said that the Soviet Union “created” Ukraine, and in a way that is partly true.”
“They just do not want war: they do not want war between Russia and Ukraine, and they do not want war between the west and Russia.”
“I am sure what is going to be announced tonight will start the process of proving that the west can be resolute and determined that we are not playing to Putin’s war game and have never sought to make Ukraine in any sense a vassal state of the west. There was no intention—this is a complete lie—that nuclear weapons or a dirty bomb could have been restored to Ukraine. The Government have to pursue the path of peace, impose the most rigorous economic sanctions and not escalate to war. My last point is that the Government should not hold the Russian people responsible for this. Most Russian people I know, and Ukrainian people, are not interested in this warped view of history and sense of victimhood. All they want is to get on with their lives in peace.”
“Well, I suspect that is what we have done. However, the German state simply sending helmets or a field hospital to Ukraine or our sending a few anti-tank handheld missiles will make no difference at all. I am not criticising the Government: we have gone through the motions, but the fact is that nothing we could have done would have been sufficient to arm the Ukrainian state well enough to be able to resist Russian aggression. I want to say to the Government that they have to pursue the path of peace, and I do not think we should decry sanctions. Putin has now moved into the dark side of history, but if we cut off Russia entirely from the rest of the world economically, we can make a difference.”
“Winston Churchill created the Council of Europe as a bastion against fascism and communism. Since the fall of communism, Russia has set great importance on its membership, as a fig leaf of respectability. Every time our Conservative group has tried to get it expelled, we have been foiled by Russian gold. Will the Prime Minister now instruct his ambassador on the Council of Europe to move for the immediate expulsion of Russia from the Council, so that there is no place for gangsters in the halls of civilised nations?”